The Queen has had her new baby – and it is a boy, a little brother for Edward! Everyone was hoping for a boy, so there are great celebrations. Edward has two elder sisters, and the baby born last year was a girl as well, but she died within a few days, poor little thing. This baby prince is strong and healthy, and his name will be Richard of Shrewsbury.
***
Tom Owen was in the hayloft this morning, eating an apple and sheltering from the rain, when he heard Clarence come into the stable below him with another man. Tom kept as still as a mouse, and heard every word they said. They were planning a new attack on the King. I said Tom should tell Earl Rivers, but I know he will not. Some things are too dangerous to meddle in.
Tom is like my father in many ways. Though he is not a doctor, he is skilled and careful, with strong hands that can haul a tree root from the ground or nurse a tender seedling. I like his curly brown hair and dark eyes and his straight white teeth. He likes me, too, but I must not fall in love with him. When Edward’s new brother comes here, there will be more to do, not less – and royal children do not find much love and laughter except with the servants who care for them.
***
It is 1475 now. And I have been to London! For a few days, young Edward had to be his father’s deputy while the King went to France. It seemed there was going to be a war, but they signed a treaty, thank goodness, so we are back at Ludlow now.
It was a lot to ask of a young child. Edward tried his best to be grown up, but he often looked strained and worried. The Queen was running everything, but whatever she did had to be agreed by Edward on the King’s behalf. A pantomime, but a serious one.
Edward will go on living at Ludlow until he is fourteen. I am glad of that, and hope they will not call on him too often to perform these state duties. It is good to be back here. I never thought this castle would feel like home, but compared with the crowded, dirty city, it is tranquil and familiar, if not exactly welcoming.
The Duke of Clarence, Uncle Richard’s older brother, has been imprisoned in the Tower. Tom never told anyone about the conversation he overheard, but the King found out somehow. Although Clarence has been so treacherous, I can’t help feeling sorry for him. His wife, Isabel, died three days before Christmas after giving birth to a baby son and today the baby died as well. The two older children are going to live with Uncle Richard and his wife, Anne. She is their aunt, and she only has the one son. People say she is not well, but I expect their servants will take good care of the children.
We have been to London again. It was Edward’s seventh birthday last week, so there was a state banquet to celebrate it. He had to play the host. He did it beautifully, dressed in silk and velvet, with a coronet on his curly head. The King and Queen were there, and countless notabilities, including Uncle Richard and Anne with their own son and Clarence’s son and daughter. Rivers was there, and Dr Alcock, and Elizabeth Woodville’s grown-up sons from her first marriage, and countless other Woodville relatives.
Rivers has translated a book from French into English. It is called The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers. William Caxton, who was at the banquet as well, is going to print it. Caxton has been abroad in Bruges, learning about wonderful new machines that that can make copies of a book in great numbers. He came home to set up a printing press of his own, and the book translated by Rivers will be the first ever to be printed in England. So that was another cause for celebration.
We have been to London yet again. This time I saw more of Edward’s little brother, Richard. He has the same fair, curling hair and angelic face as Edward. It is planned that he will come to join us at Ludlow later this month, for he is almost the same age as Edward was when I first saw him. Far too young, I thought, for the ceremony we had to attend. At barely four years old, he was being married to Anne Mowbray, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. She is just six, a slender little girl with a pale, serious face and a mass of red hair escaping from a coronet that looked too big and heavy for her.
These royal children are like puppies traded between dog breeders for their future potential. I don’t like to see them pushed into such use when they are hardly more than babies, but that is how the strange world of these privileged people works.
***
Little Prince Richard is with us now. He is a gentle boy, less serious than his older brother, perhaps because he is not burdened by knowing he will one day be the king. I am doing my best to ensure that we settle down together comfortably as three instead of two. I take care that Edward shall have no cause for jealousy, or that Richard shall feel left out, and they seem to get on very well together. Edward enjoys his superiority, knowing the Castle and everyone in it, but he is very sweet to his little brother.
Neither of the boys has the solid build of their massive father. With their slim build and fair hair inherited from Elizabeth, they look like those paintings of angels on cathedral walls. When I see their two golden heads together, talking or engrossed by something they are playing with, it fills me with delight.
Edward is taking great pride in helping his younger brother to improve his reading – and it is not difficult, for Richard is a clever child and learns very quickly. They have occasional arguments, but they are great friends. For me, it is fascinating to watch them grow and learn. The days spent with them are a constant joy and they are going to be such fine young men.